Granddaddy learns some stuff
These creatures are smarter than I first thought
By Lonnie Adamson
I am great at being a grandfather… for about 15 minutes; then all hell breaks loose as the chaos builds.
But being greeted at the door by smiling faces and shouts of “Yay, Granddaddy’s home!” IS a fabulous uplift!
Three or four of the grands stay with us each Monday night. It is a plan my wife, Nancy, devised to insure us a regular connection to them. It also gives their parents a night to re-connect and the children a chance to meet with cousins and generally run wild.
Nancy, known by the children as Lovey, is better at dealing with the running wild part than I am. She is more of a free spirit. It is at these times that I realize I am as much a work in progress as the children. They are great teachers.
It is not that she just lets them run amok. The afternoon after she picks them up from daycare always involves a calmer activity, like coloring. But Lovey lays down the law about that happening on the tile kitchen floor and not on the dining table, sofa, or walls!
THEN comes something like riding scooters in the driveway — BUT, everyone must wear a helmet. That rule frequently turns into a struggle as little hands get impatient to get into action, but it is a requirement — or little butts sit on the steps. I know, I know – just about every grandparent alive today rode a bicycle without a helmet, without knee and elbow pads, some of us without shoes! And we have the scars to prove it, but not these children. And not at Lovey’s house.
We believe in the value of outdoor living — for ourselves and the children. As we age, we have come to realize the potential for injury — for ourselves and the children. Their next mode of self-propelled transportation — the bicycle — poses new challenges for them and new worries for us.
It is not difficult to imagine how my sudden fall from a runaway bicycle could have meant cracking my head on the pavement, rather than badly skinned elbows. Bicycle helmets reduce head injuries by 48%, serious head injuries by 60%, traumatic brain injury by 53%. (Statistics from a report by the Brain Injury Association of America)
For more outdoor adventure, Nancy’s friend Aunt Toni believed the children should have a sand box. She investigated the best options, understanding the advanced design concept of one having a folding lid to keep the neighborhood cats from using it and creating a truly disgusting issue just outside the kitchen door.
The sandbox is usually the least problematic Monday afternoon adventure. Sand brushes off and can captivate imaginations for hours — but sometimes the group experience leads to throwing sand, dumping sand onto someone’s head, and scooping sand in large amounts to another location!
In warm weather the pool gets all of the attention. They all love it, but Channing is the most enthralled. She is ready for a swim in the still-cool month of April. She has not found an April swim to be a mistake yet — although we have had to force her from the water kicking and screaming, and with chattering teeth and shivering limbs. More recently, we have relented and fired up the pool heater for Sophia’s birthday.
The children also enjoy helping with chicken chores. There’s feeding, there’s watering, there’s collecting eggs from our nine hens. It has led to some queasiness about poop. It’s led to about chickens on the loose from the coop, spilled feed, and disputes over who gets to carry the eggs -- and, ultimately, broken eggs and tears.
In the end, the children teach me more than I teach them.
Lesson 1 for the Granddaddy who never reared children: Patience. Little brains don’t have the experiences that I have had to know when something is likely to go wrong. If and when it does go wrong, it leads to a major cleanup effort for the third time before dinner. Allow extra time.
Lesson 2 is that dinner needs to be on the table. We see little ones crash into bundles of frustration when the energy source runs low inside their bodies. One minute they are fine; the next they crash.
Lesson 3 is a follow-up from 1 and 2. – They are each unique. Anna Kate wants to take charge, Jackson wants to do his own thing — sometimes in open opposition to Anna Kate’s direction. Channing walks to the beat of a different drummer, and Sophia smiles — until she doesn’t.
What lesson 3 means for me is to view the experiences as simply learning for them. Don’t rush to judgment. Broken eggs don’t matter as much as the value of lessons learned. Listen more. Understand better. Laugh.
We welcome your comments. The Unexpected Granddaddy is learning.